Day by Day

Wednesday, 9 May 2018

If you want a simple - quick and dirty - way to edit a video, there's nothing to surpass Quicktime Pro from Apple. When you just want to chop a bit off a video file or splice a few videos together (assuming they are encoded the same). And I am talking about Windows and specifically with version 7 of QT Pro. It is incredibly easy to use, it's fast and lossless. (That means it doesn't actually convert or re-encode video, so it doesn't lose anything.)

As a video player, it is unnecessary. As Apple says:

However Apple, in its wisdom, decided to retire this gem. It still works now and can be installed. I still have a license and can use it, but there must be some suitable alternatives for when Apple finally closes it down? Or when Windows no longer plays ball.

Sunday, 8 April 2018

Brexit shall, I fear, be the greatest disaster to overcome the United Kingdom in centuries.

Having grown up in Croydon and studied in Manchester, I moved from the UK to the Netherlands in 1973. I am a British emigrant with two children who had a Dutch mother. The children are half English but only have Dutch passports. If Brexit goes ahead they will no longer have the freedom of movement that allowed me to settle in the UK. They would have retained that freedom, had I applied for British passports for them before they were eighteen. But when they turned eighteen (my son Ian in 2015), there was no shadow on the horizon and no apparent need to apply for British passports. Like all of us, they have benefitted from the shared European heritage that gives them the freedom to move and settle anywhere in the EU, including in England where they spent a considerable time in their childhood.

Indeed, in the last two years, my son has been able to take advantage of the freedom of movement. As a talented young jazz musician and member of the Dutch National Youth Jazz Orchestra, he has visited the UK to perform in a cooperative venture with the British National Youth Jazz Orchestra and the German one, BuJazzO. The apt name Three Nations under One Groove reminds us of our shared cultural heritage and the benefits for all of a cooperation like this. If Brexit were to go ahead, ventures like this would be a lot more difficult. In addition, the plight of all European artists and musicians in the case of Brexit would be awful. Actors, musicians, filmmakers, artists now have the freedom to move freely and work where they like within the EU. Much as Vincent van Gogh did 140 years ago.

The very close result in an advisory referendum - voted for by only 37% of the restricted electorate (which excluded Brits who had moved abroad, Europeans who had settled in the UK and the 16-17-year-olds who were allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum) - cannot possibly justify the devastating constitutional changes now imminent. Even less so since, in the two years following the referendum, there has been absolutely no progress towards a deal in any way comparable to the present extremely advantageous one.

In addition, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the referendum campaign was riddled with dirty tricks. The result itself has been thrown into doubt and, in the meantime, many British people are changing their minds. I am delighted to see that attempts to curb the freedom of MPs in the House of Commons are not effective in the House of Lords. I'm counting on you to protect the interests of all citizens and inhabitants of the UK.

Please vote in favour of the "Parliamentary motions on a referendum", Lord Newby's amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill.

Tuesday, 6 March 2018

I have no idea how or why, but Facebook has been plundering my PayPal account. Having boosted two Facebook posts (for a small non-commercial local community meeting) for the sum of €20 each, most of which was covered by an initial credit of €40, Facebook suddenly started billing me and PayPal paid up a sum now amounting to €300. I've tried to contact Facebook for the last week, but I'm discovering that isn't as easy as it should be. PayPal recognizes I have disputed three payments and has escalated the disputes to claims, but I have not had a single response from Facebook. Mind you, I'm not even sure I have actually reached anyone at Facebook because if you try and report a problem, you don't get to actually get to keep what you wrote and it scrolls off the screen, so you can't screensaver it either. Then at the end, you get greeted by a message thanking me for providing feedback. Then you get pointed to the "Advertiser Support Page" where there is also no option to contact Facebook.At last, I managed to find a page where I could dispute the payments. Namely this one. How does one contact Facebook? And have other people had problems with them stealing money? 😡

Thursday, 1 March 2018

What does Honest Leasehold mean for you?In June 2017, the ruling coalition in Amsterdam of VVD, D66 and SP agreed on a new leasehold arrangement.The way in which the dues for your leasehold are now calculated is unjust: Amsterdam is claiming part of your home. That has to stop. And it also provides an online calculator to see what the alternative would mean for you. This text provides further information about leasehold in Amsterdam and our alternative. More and more people are realising that the present arrangement is unreasonable and unjust. After the elections, leasehold is sure to be back on the agenda. Our aim is, once and for all, to create a fair system in Amsterdam.

What is wrong with the present leasehold arrangement?The present arrangement made by the local coalition of D66/VVD/SP comes down to the municipality taking ownership of part of your residence. At its core is the 'Buurtstraatquote' (BSQ), a percentage of the value of your house of which the municipality says: that is basically the value of the land and belongs to us. This can amount to as much as 49 percent of the WOZ value. However, this method is completely unjust. It ignores the reality of owning a house: you can’t pick up your house and put it down somewhere else; your house and the land it occupies are inseparable. So you have to bear in mind that the ground is already in use and someone already has an existing contract for it. In addition, the municipality has already been paid in full for the value of the land. That is why the CDA wants to base the calculation on the existing contracts.The present arrangement is unfair and leads to unreasonably high costs for homeowners. In addition, the present arrangement is completely untenable. After 2019, the costs throughout the city will explode even more dramatically.

What does the CDA want and why is that so reasonable?The CDA wants an honest leasehold based on existing contracts. By far the most leasehold contracts have already been reviewed. So the value of the ground has been determined. Why should the value of the land be recalculated using expensive, controversial, complex and obscure calculations and charged once again? That is not logical or reasonable. The CDA is of the opinion: if you have already paid the value of the ground, you don’t have to pay it again. If it has been bought off, you’re done. For once and for all. That’s logical.In addition, it has to be made much more affordable to buy off the leasehold. Scientific research indicates that the value of the ground under dwellings is about ten percent of the WOZ valuation. The CDA adopts that as the maximum.Does the council need the income? No. If the new municipal council agrees to the CDA proposal, then the council will not lose any money in the short-term. It just means that in decades to come the council has less additional income. But Amsterdam can cope with that just fine. Nearly all the other municipalities in the Netherlands also manage to function without leasehold. The City of Amsterdam has all kinds of other ways of generating income: tourist tax, its share in Schiphol airport, the Harbour and central government funds, for instance. It is unreasonable and unnecessary to ask a relatively small number of homeowners to pay extra.